A leading Republican in the United States House has proposed a $604 billion spending plan for the Pentagon that would divert hundreds of millions of dollars next year to Kurdish and Sunni forces fighting the so-called Islamic State.

Rep. Mac Thornberry
(R-Texas), the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee,
unveiled his proposal for the 2016 National Defense
Authorization Act, or NDAA, on Monday this week. It’s expected to
be debated by the House Armed Services Committee on
Wednesday.

“Our country has never before faced the spectrum of varied
and serious threats to our security that we face today. Beginning
to make these reforms, and seeing the reform process through in
the future, is vital if we are to overcome these
challenges,” he said in a statement.

Thornberry’s bill contains a provision that would directly fund
tribal security forces engaged against the self-styled Islamic
State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. Specifically, Thornberry’s
$604 billion defense budget calls for funds to go towards
assisting “the military and other security forces of or
associated with the Government of the Republic of Iraq, including
Kurdish and tribal security forces or other local security forces
with a national security mission” in fiscal year 2016.

.@MacTXPress on
FY16 NDAA reforms: US "has never before faced the spectrum of
varied and serious threats to our security that we face" now

If approved, the provision mandates that anywhere from $178
million to $429 million of those funds go directly to the Kurdish
Peshmerga, Sunni tribal security forces and the Iraqi Sunni
National Guard.

The proposal calls for putting $715 million aside for anti-ISIS
efforts led by locals in the region, but specifies that funds
won’t be allocated to Baghdad if American officials determine
that “ethnic and sectarian minorities” are not
substantially represented in the new Iraqi government’s security
forces.

“If the secretary of defense and the secretary of state do
not assess that the government of Iraq has substantially achieved
such conditions, the secretary of defense would be required to
withhold fiscal year 2016 assistance directly to the government
of Iraq,” the clause stipulates.

“Finally, this section would require that the Kurdish
Peshmerga, the Sunni tribal security forces with a national
security mission and the Iraqi Sunni National Guard be deemed a
country, which would allow these security forces to directly
receive assistance from the United States under this section”
in the event that the conditions aren’t met, according to
the proposal.

The language is contained in Section 1223 of the congressman’s
proposal, “Modification of Authority to Provide Assistance to
Counter the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.”

Additionally, Thornberry’s proposed NDAA for fiscal year 2016
also calls for lethal weapons to be sent to Ukraine where
military forces continue to battle pro-Russian rebels in the
country’s east. Other provisions would reauthorize a ban on
transferring detainees out of the US military’s prison at
Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, and restore funding to the Pentagon’s
embattled fleet of A-10 warplanes.

“This year’s NDAA will begin a process of much needed reform
to the Department of Defense. These reforms are designed to
recruit and retain America’s best and brightest, ensure that our
forces maintain their technological edge, and to balance
resources from the ‘tail’ to the ‘tooth’ of the force,”
Thornberry said.